So, ALL of them. Have we created any new national symbols?
I think it’s a distinction without a difference, an example of hair splitting. Kaep obviously finds racism behind the offense he found there, not sure why you’re making excuses for him.
It is being taught, including the AA part. The flag may teach some young Americans that a flag they learned about in school can be used to inspire the wearer of the shoes just as it inspired a fledgling nation to fight the British. There’s something about that message that I find both unifying and apt coming from a US athletic company. That’s the overall point of Nike’s marketing message to its consumers: a Betsy Ross flag image on a shoe is another version of “just do it.”
Nike is a public company the decisions about which lines to sell is up to them. Kaep’s choice to weigh in is a lot like his decision to take a knee during NFL games. In both instances he’s willing to use his employer’s resources to make a personal statement. When you put that together with his performance as an NFL quarterback, it’s not difficult to understand why he’s unemployable (in his position as QB) in the NFL, and imo why he should become unemployable as an endorser of consumer products for an athletic company like Nike.
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Maybe Nike will use this one for their next design.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG
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Yeeeeeah, it is and it isn’t.
I’m not saying that kids are using the Bruce Caton university textbook on US history, or that there’s time in a school day to teach US history completely. I wish there were, believe me. The bad with the good. We’d be far better off now if we taught US history, US government, and US civics more completely than we do now.
Is your school district teaching kids about the 3/5ths compromise in the US Constitution?
I have no idea. I teach Engrish.
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Why does he strongly dislike it? If not due the fact he finds racist connotation with the flag.
Idk, MLK went through some real struggles. Kap is from a affluent family, affluent enough he attended a lot of expensive football camps from what I saw. Something I doubt many AA players from poor backgrounds experienced unless they were known scouted talents at some point as was invited for free.
I don’t necessarily mind the knee taking. I think he can do that if he felt. But his actions after sounds like he’s just seeking attention like telling black artists to play at he super bowl. Getting pissed at those who did and basically pressure them to donate their money for their work. He lost me from that point.
He’s just another SJW seeking attention. He’s no Muhammad Ali, Ali was real.
The idea that these big companies and celebrities are going to show us the way to be better is repulsive. Nike is not on my shopping list.
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It comes of completely fake when companies do that. Just donate to a good cause and limit the pollution they cause. Don’t use your products as a moral compass to profit.
Don’t tell us that you stand against racism when you get Chinese children making your shoes for pennies a day and come back and sell your sneakers for 250$ to urban youth.
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Kaep’s problem is that no NFL team is going to build a program around him. Why? Because Kaep takes chances that are outside his talent as a QB. He is not a good pocket passer, and once he’s out of the pocket he tends to lose the ball or get hurt. You cannot build a system around that kind of a QB, he will never produce championships. And because you can’t build a system around him, he’s of less value as a backup because again nobody has built the tools necessary to make a QB like Kaep succeed.
If you look at Kaep, you see a long-term trend. He’s not a great QB because imo he enjoys running out of the pocket in order to create an offense of his own. As a backup he enjoyed breaking with teammates in taking a knee during the national anthem in order to create a message of his own. As a Nike contributor he enjoys breaking with teammates in putting the kibosh on Nike’s sneakers in order to create a message of his own.
The thing most constant in Kaep’s life is that he enjoys using somebody else’s resources to create something he can claim for himself. Imo it’s just selfishness masquerading as heroic acts.
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Can’t believe I’m agreeing with you , still stranger things have happened. 
I agree with your football assessment of him. He isn’t a championship caliber starter. He isn’t like a Michael Vick out of the pocket either. And as a backup, his job is there to be a good teammate mostly.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with the knee taking. But it’s hard to want my back up QB to create distractions not about winning the game. NFL franchises are in the business of winning and making money. He possibly hurts both that way.
My thoughts too.
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No NFL team can serve two masters and succeed. You subsume every outside distraction in an effort to win championships, or you lose. Pretty much that simple. No NFL team can be the champion of BLM and win a Super Bowl. Pick one.
Not really, what subjects could be more polarizing than religion or drug legalization? I don’t remember disagreeing about anything else. We probably agree on a lot of things.
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The shoe itself just presents a flag, it doesn’t teach anything. And the education system in America mostly passes over the atrocities that occurred in the late 1700s in order to focus solely on the construction of the nation. So, no, it is not being taught.
To the second part, yes, Nike is a publicly traded company, a very successful one, in fact. Yet they still choose to employ Kaep. They wouldn’t employ him as an endorser unless it had value to them, so clearly, he is very employable as an endorser.
It was not until college, and not until I got my second undergraduate degree from a university far from the Midwest where I grew up, that I was exposed to history that read more like this (from Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States:
Meanwhile, the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described a capitalist state: pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich. Not that the rich agreed among themselves; they had disputes over policies. But the purpose of the state was to settle upper-class disputes peacefully, control lower-class rebellion, and adopt policies that would further the long-range stability of the system. The arrangement between Democrats and Republicans to elect Rutherford Hayes in 1877 set the tone. Whether Democrats or Republicans won, national policy would not change in any important way.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with the quote above. I’m simply making the point that a special set of circumstances must be present before you are exposed to views like what you see in Howard Zinn’s book.
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There’s a good reason Howard Zinn’s “history” isn’t taught to young Americans, and not many Americans at all in fact.
Good grief, if Americans had to consume a steady diet of Howard Zinn we’d surely be the Soviet States of America, not the United States.
The USA is a great country that has many, many things to be proud of, today and in its past. That it grew quickly, and that it sacrificed making itself meet the likes of Howard Zinn’s approval to the goal of uniting tens of fiefdoms/states into a larger whole, from sea to shining sea, is nothing to hang our collective heads in shame about. Although I get it, some Americans (and many if not most non-Americans) would much prefer we hang our heads in shame rather than celebrate our achievements.
Just because young Americans aren’t taught every mistake Americans made in the past 400 years does not mean that Americans know no history.
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Yes, it is taught. It’s just not taught to the self-loathing standards of some.
Let’s see how well Kaep stands up as a “very employable” endorser for Nike once he’s separated from the NFL by a few more years and some gray hair.
Hopefully Kaep will have learned how to stand on his own two feet by then.